We woke to a lovely rainy morning. I spent the some time exploring our stay a bit more.
Since it was raining, Tyler headed to the dollar store to get umbrellas for everyone.
He returned with 7 umbrella shaped objects. While distributing them, it was revealed that they were not in fact umbrellas; but umbrella shaped car windshield sunscreens, which were not particularly waterproof.
This was a very funny thing to have 7 of.
While the main plan for today was to go to Akihabara, we decided to stop at Ueno first to visit an American style shoe store. The shoes Wally had brought were not quite up to the amount of walking we were doing, so Wally needed an upgrade.
They looked really cool though
We made our way to Tateishi station, which was our first foray into the main street of Tateishi. This turned out to be an absolutely lovely covered market street. We grabbed some beef and rice bowls for breakfast, and then spent some time looking around the shooping street.
A note about frogs...
2 of my coworkers at Wolff Bros are big frog appreciators. They both own frogs and collect frog related goods. I promised them that I would take a picture of every frog I saw, and I always keep my promises, so keep an eye out for that.
After looking around, we finally had our first run in with the public transit system of Japan, which did not go quite as smoothly as we hoped. Tateishi station was divided into 2 sections on either side of the tracks, and we were not sure which side to get on. Once we did figure it out, it also took a second to figure out how to buy tickets from the vending machines.
We did eventually figure it out, and got on a train to Ueno.
In addition to getting shoes for Wally and 7-11 fried chicken for me (very tasty), we stopped at a mutli-floor gachapon / collectibles store. In addition to the Ghibli section, they also had Katana grade fingernail clippers, made from the finest Nippon steel. I did not buy them.
After our shopping escapade, I and Wally went to Ueno park, mainly to sit for a bit. At this point, we were waiting for Jackson, who was still recovering at home base. He was going to meet as at Ueno, so we waited there awhile.
While waiting, we ended up talking to some students who used us for their English conversation school assignment.
Also, when Tyler arrived, we went into Ueno station to purchase Pasmo cards, to make using the train system easier.
Jackson, who had taken the wrong train several times, and also arrived at the opposite end of Ueno park and had to walk to get to us, did eventually arrive, and thus we set off for the glorious land of Akihabara.
The otaku promised land definitely lives up to it's reputation. Store after store of nothing but arcades, anime, and and tech goodies. It's also very walkable!
The group ended up splitting up to pursue our various interests. I ended up at an arcade machine for Kantai Collection, the ship girl game. It took awhile to figure out how to play, since it was in Japanese for some reason. It prints cards out that you use kind of like Amiibo; a physical collection that you can use to load your collection of characters into the game to build your fleet. I also met a veteran player who showed me his extensive collection.
The game itself was interesting, but kind of shallow; pretty much just a single game loop with the sole purpose of getting you chances to roll the gacha.
Later, I met up with Jackson, and we went to a tech store to get a case for his burner phone he had gotten for this trip. We then met up with the rest of the group to get mcdonalds, which was ok. Had a nice talk with everyone about their various programming adjacent careers though.
After dinner, it was time to go shopping for figures! (Or dolls, as my mom calls them)
I found a popup store for "A place further than the Universe" and "Yuru Camp" in the same building. These are both pretty niche shows in the US, so finding an entire event for them was mega exciting.
There was also a super cool store that had glass cases that people could rent out to sell collections of figures. It was interesting since you could get a sense for what kind of things they liked based on the collection of figures they were selling.
And then at last, it was time for the alligator man to guide us back to home base.
Also, Jackson's luggage from his delayed flight finally arrived.